A forgettable and lackluster fish-out-of-water rom-com.

It's thrilling and lovely and sad and explosive in all the right ways, and it needs to be seen – on the big screen, in 3-D – to be believed.

Though there is plenty of razzle-dazzle onscreen, Nine is unlikely to ignite many sparks among viewers.

All told, The Young Victoria is a very well-made if not especially memorable picture, moving with all the grace and steadfastness of a waltz Victoria and Albert share, but absent any urgency or anything particularly exclamatory.

Bridges makes this sozzled and desperate ex-desperado – a cliché by any other name – as fresh and vital as one final shot at cowboy-poet redemption. It may sound crazy, but it's true.

The animation itself is superb, and the filmmakers long ago mastered the dreamy, stream-of-consciousness narrative tropes that work so well with stop-motion, but even with all that going for it, A Town Called Panic feels more like some exotic animated curiosity than a film to return to again and again.

Narratively, we all know where the trajectory of the story is headed, thus the culminating match (nearly 20 minutes) takes up too much screen time without adding anything new to the drama.

How the devastating story of the senseless murder of a 14-year-old could be stripped of emotion is a feat in itself, though one of dubious achievement.

Everything fits perfectly, from titles to fin, but most of all Firth, who dons the role of George like a fine bespoke suit.

By the end of this film/experiment/prank – which, to be blunt, is pretty unsatisfying – the viewer is left to ponder what it's all about, and what its purpose may have been, which, knowing Lynch and Herzog, might well be what it was about, and what its purpose was.

The middle is terrific, especially in a lengthy, unassuming scene in which the three leads sit, sip drinks, and have a good chat: It marks one of the great celluloid pleasures of the year, so virtuosically written, performed, and filmed is it.

The Last Station would have satisfied alone as a witty, manic lark, but as it moves toward the titular railway station, the film unfurls into so much more – a work of compassion, modulated mournfulness, and unchecked joy.

Brothers is too depthless to dredge up any tears.

It's hardly a classic of the genre, but then again, like Armour hot dogs: it's Comfort Food for Men.

Everybody’s Fine – a movie about the lies grown children tell their parents – is, ironically, one of the most disingenuous movies to come out of Hollywood in a while.

The bulk of the documentary observes Pipkin as he traverses the world showing us a score of examples of solutions that are presently working.

If you want to see a good comedy about a couple’s marital problems getting worked out through the course of a home invasion, check out "The Ref."

The Road deviates from McCarthy's original text via a series of flashbacks to the man's pre-apocalyptic life with the woman (Theron) who both leaves her family behind and is in turn left behind by them.

It's Disney's best traditionally animated outing in ages.

Not so much bad as it is witless and predictable.

It's so unreal it hurts.

Linklater has crafted an always genial and at times even joyful period charmer about that moment on the cusp: before a boy becomes a man and another man becomes a mythological figure.

It’s not an altogether convincing portrait, but it is an entertaining, even moving one, and the forcefulness of Bullock's presence goes a long way in pulling the film back from the brink of cuddliness.

This is the best performance Cage has delivered in ages, and Herzog demonstrates, once again, that he is capable of virtually anything.

At times, it looks as though Broken Embraces might be the love child of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock, with its dramatic broad strokes, iconic reds, and teasing narrative clues.

I’m told Bella’s helplessness is true to the spirit of the novels, but so what? It’s almost 2010 – let’s get hip, people.

While expertly executed animation-wise and passably entertaining for very young kids (less so, their parents), is still as dull as the hull on Rocketship X-M.

You may have the biggest flat-screen DLP monitor in the city, but Red Cliff will never look half as spectacular as it will on the big – and I mean really big – screen.

This is an animated film that happily has room for both an existentialist dread of death and a grinning joie de vivre.

Where else are you going to get a chance to see the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy drift down the side of a mile-high tsunami and take out the White House? Big. Dumb. Fun.

One of the rare movies that communicates honestly and artfully about the real casualties of war: the surviving combatants.

Despite a title change from "The Boat That Rocked" to Pirate Radio, this British import exudes about as much outlaw swagger as Tom DeLay in a dance competition.

It is certainly the best button-pushing movie of the year.

There is Clooney’s deceptively layered performance, some startling bits of laugh-out-loud absurdity, and the not-at-all-negligible pleasure to be had in a cockeyed point of view.

It's a mess and it might cost him some career freedom, but at least Kelly hasn't cashed in his trademark narrative complexity for Hollywood pap.

This is a strange movie (it feels like a lost episode of the old Leonard Nimoy chestnut In Search of …) about strange people doing strange things.

Either you cotton to Zemeckis’ motion-capture aesthetic or you don’t: To me, it seems like an awful lot of effort for an insignificant payoff. But it appears that the filmmaker is stuck on the technique – at least until holographic movie technology comes along.

Amiable and proficient, this indie romantic comedy is never more or less than reliable.

Isn't for everyone, obviously; it might not be for anyone, come to think of it.

White is cast in this film as a “guardian angel” and adds another level of painful homosexual confusion and stereotyping to the film. Ultimately, all the chafing caused by Gentlemen Broncos is likely to leave you saddlesore.

By far the freakiest and most unnerving shocker in theatres this season.

Neither a true concert film nor a strict behind-the-scenes documentary, This Is It is, like Jackson himself, a real hybrid.

Possibly the best argument against couples therapy ever, Antichrist is a tour-de-force trip inside the mind of a dangerously depressed man. That man is Danish filmmaker von Trier, and he has gone on record as having conceived and executed Antichrist in the wake of a deep depression.

Most devastating to the film’s effectiveness is its inability to convey that one essential to the story of Amelia Earhart: the tangible pleasures of flying.

It's a totally serviceable reboot for young people who are just discovering the joys of manga, but I can't help but miss the raw animation and even rawer emotional aesthetics of Tezuka's original televised animé series.

It's more fun than a poke in the heart with a sharp stick.

For fans, however, Saw VI is, pardon the pun, a cut above the rest but not, sadly, by much.

Satire without teeth is sort of a mewling entity that brings little into sharp focus. Nevertheless, the performances here are all stellar, and narrative movies that take the making of art seriously are a rare breed indeed.

Less a traditional martial-artistry marathon than it is an exercise in filmic frustration, lovely to look at by small degrees, but a mud-spattered mess of a movie overall.

I don't want to oversell the thing. It is, quite simply, something very special indeed.

Law Abiding Citizen, ultimately and inappropriately, tips the scales in favor of the Man over mankind. Somebody call Charles Bronson.

Short to short, it’s a Russian roulette.

A dull, plodding remake.

An intriguing psychological study that, more or less, leaves out the psychology and presents us with surface behavior.

A distinctive story with universal appeal.

The Damned United is Shakespearean in its tragedy.

Intelligence is insulted at every turn in this new date movie.

Refn’s artful and energetic film never goes further than face value.

Hair is personal. It's also political.

Associated with the modernist architectural movement centered in Southern California during the mid-20th century, Shulman’s still photographs are essential to any study of the style’s vast popularization and commercialism.

Not even the always reliable talents of McKean and Lynch can help pull this comedy out of its ironic slump.

This up-from-the-fields slice of Tejano pride is a punchy, melodramatic piece of tried-and-true Americana that mixes cultures (and film genres) with an eye toward knocking down borders both cultural and contemporary.

The Yes Men’s bravery and unflagging sense of optimistically doomed humor – which comes across as a quixotic version of Monty Python by way of Upton Sinclair – is to be applauded and, wherever possible, acted upon.

It is rich with ideas and contemplations and packed with the sort of existential jokes that tickle the Coen boys so.

Barrymore’s casting choices are intrinsic to the success of the film. Lewis, under her rink name, Iron Maven, hasn’t had this meaty a role in maybe 15 years, while Wilson as the team’s shaggy male coach is a hoot to watch. Harden and Stern, as Bliss’ parents, create fleshed-out characters instead of lazy depictions of the paper tigers that grown-ups usually are in teens’ stories.

Zombieland is dead set against being dead serious. Its tonal pallor has more in common with a foreshortened "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" than with "28 Days" or "Weeks Later," and then, again, there's that jaw-dropping cameo. It'll kill ya.

If anything, The Invention of Lying is too soft for the satirical promise of its premise.

The documentary hasn’t the depth of another study of high school ball, "Hoop Dreams,"' and tends toward repetition, but, in the end, its heartfelt saga scores.

A staggering document of the lengths parents will go to for the sake of their child.

Surrogates' morality is less Asimov than asinine, although it's bizarrely reassuring, in a nihilistic sort of way, to believe that in the future, when the world is ready to play The Sims for real (so to speak), our avatars are all going to look like generic porn stars with shitty airbrush jobs.

Don't believe the hype: Paranormal Activity may be a lot of things, but the words "scary" and "movie" are not among them. It is instead nothing more or less than an excruciatingly tedious YouTube gag cleverly marketed to go viral in the broadest and most box office-friendly way.

In all fairness, the sheer, overwhelming mediocrity of everything about Pandorum – Travis Milloy's hackneyed, ultra-derivative script, Alvart's plodding pacing and dull direction, even the eventual crimson tide of gore that duly arrives just in time to keep audience members over the age of 13 from dozing off – may well constitute a new breed of horror: In space, no one can hear you snore.

It's not a total wipeout: Czuchry embodies the Tucker Max(-ims) to a self-obsessed fault, and there are moments of rough comic brilliance scattered throughout, but really, this particular antihero is all anti- and zero hero.

It’s a perfectly nice period piece and biographical backgrounder, but the film feels as though it’s a meal of tasty side dishes that lacks a main course.

It’s distinguishing the trickle from the treacle that becomes the problem.

The opening montage is a jazzy, grabby thing, artfully layering the kids’ auditions to mimic the frenzied pace of the day. But that freneticism never really goes away, nor does the staccato timing.

They’re not all hideous, the men who sit for interviews with a graduate student (Nicholson) and unload their dirty laundry. Sometimes they’re just feckless, or crass; some are even pitiable.

This time the acclaimed filmmaker tackles an entire “ism” and, much like its ambiguous title, Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore’s film is an unmethodical survey of a gargantuan topic, one that has only grown more so in the year since he began work on the project.

Maybe Soderbergh felt as though he already did a straight-ahead version of this story with "Erin Brockovich" and therefore decided to revamp the tune in the key of Richard Lester.

The sights are ingenious, impressively rendered in 3-D, and the sounds – including cheeky voice work by Mr. T, Neil Patrick Harris, and Benjamin Bratt – are a blast.

Love Happens? It depends on your definition of “love.” And “happens.” There isn’t much of either in this predictable, putzy drama.

An attempt to infuse some girl power into their mash-up of cheeky horror films and teen-angst movies. The result is more mash than smash as Jennifer’s Body squanders its initial good will by failing to deliver the goods on either score.

To a one, they're terrific. But in this overpacked ensemble cast, it's Binoche you want to see more of.

It’s not a movie. It’s a two-hour infomercial for biodiesel.

Campion’s story of a tubercular poet and his lady love recasts the hackneyed old stanza in refreshing new verse.

It's a bit surprising that a documentary with such an unwieldy title offers such a streamlined and resonant account of history.

This latest offering continues a trend toward increasingly mature moviemaking from the actor/writer/director.

The film moves swiftly and vividly, but in retrospect, numerous plot holes come to mind. Not Forgotten presents a fascinating microcosm but ultimately loses believability when placed in a larger context.

What makes this documentary work is that the Beavan family is so relatable.

Brings absolutely nothing new to the autopsy table that wasn't previously covered.

This expanded version only suffers, albeit in grim visual splendor, from the extrapolation.

Crude's moving testimony and careful documentation make it hard to turn away from this issue. It will certainly remain in your mind the next time you stop for gas.

Considerably less of a thrillgasm than playing "Frogger" blindfolded.

Indisputably awful comedy.

It’s a vivid indictment of the way in which we all stumble along, yet the film never musters full-throated chagrin at our dull complacency.

Amreeka is anything but a depressing digression on American wartime paranoia.

As mesmerizing as watching bread toast. Death, be not proud, indeed.

The twentysomething talents behind Mystery Team are still in the comedy minors, but this nerdy, nutty, perfectly pitched first swing suggests there are major things to come.